


Night Watch

by little_murmaider



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Hey have some more sad sack Post-Doomstar angst, M/M, On the house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/pseuds/little_murmaider
Summary: The band stays with Toki in shifts. Skwisgaar's shifts are the longest.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to get myself out of this creative funk I've been in, vis-a-vie more Doomstar-related angst, ha-cha-cha-cha.

The hospital room could only accommodate one at a time, so they stayed with Toki in shifts. When exhaustion threatened to make one’s eyes bleed, another tapped in. Skwisgaar’s shifts lasted the longest. He treated his turns as endurance tests; while the others lasted several hours before needing relief, Skwisgaar held out for days. On more than one occasion, Nathan removed him from the room by force.  
  
Between the painkillers and his demolished sleep schedule, Toki made for lousy company. The handful of times he was conscious, he was a groggy jumble of nonsensical mumbles and inappropriate laughter. The guys had different ways to pass the time. Nathan read out loud. Pickles put on cartoons. Murderface detailed the battle strategies of his favorite Civil War campaigns. (Look, he didn’t get a lot of opportunities to discuss his special interests. He took what he could get.) Skwisgaar did what he always did. He played guitar.  
  
He rolled through the entire Dethklok catalogue twice. He looked up tabs for all the songs from all the dumb Disney movies Toki was so enamored with. When he finished those, he plucked out the unvarnished melodies he’d never committed to paper, stuff he’d never played for anyone. But no matter what he played, the gesture felt cheap, the notes sour. It didn’t provide him with its usual creature comfort; tension coagulated in his chest, thick and immutable. He kept on regardless. What else was he supposed to do?  
  
The quiet of the hospital was unnerving. The hum of the machines inched under his skin; the staccato beeping of a smoke detector’s dying battery made him flinch. When Toki started talking in his sleep, Skwisgaar thought it was a hallucination. When Toki was awake, any attempts at speaking were feeble and marble-mouthed. But in sleep his voice was clear, his diction perfect. Skwisgaar was disarmed at how casual his comments were. Absent were signs of lingering trauma; Toki sounded breezy, like he did when the five of them would shoot the shit about something inconsequential. So Skwisgaar abandoned the guitar, and started answering him.   
  
It wasn’t exactly a conversation; more of a new type of call-and-response. But the faux-normalcy relaxed Skwisgaar. He didn’t realize how much he missed hearing Toki’s voice.  
  
“Pickle gonna kicks your ass whens he find outs you takes his marmalade,” Toki said one night. The moon hung high in the starless sky, casting the dour room in soft white light. Wind stirred the curtains, carrying the slightest bite of frost. Skwisgaar shifted, cheap plastic groaning beneath him.  
  
“Oh, I knows how Pickle get abouts hims marmalade,” he answered. “Buts lifes ams about risks, you knows? I gots to takes my chances, whens I gots dem.”  
  
“How we gonna explains all dese dead hermit crabs?"  
  
Skwisgaar chuckled. “Dat ams on you, pals. You gots us intos dis mess, you gonna gets us outs.”  
  
“How much you t’inks one tit weigh? Just ones really big boob gots to bes four pounds, rights?”  
  
“Ahhhh,” Skwisgaar leaned forward, draping his arms over the guardrail. “You ams in lucks, for dis ams an area whats I gots a greats deals of knowl-dedge. You sees, little Toki, it all depend ons de circumference--”  
  
Toki laughed, the sound so full of genuine joy that for a moment Skwisgaar forgot where they were. “I shoulds be deads.”  
  
Skwisgaar stiffened, the delusion broken.  
  
“Whats?”  
  
“Ja, I don’ts even know whys I’m alives,” he said, in the bright tone he would have used in a television interview. “I shoulds be deads.”  
  
**_Dead_**. He’d worked hard to keep the word far from his thoughts. If he didn’t treat it as a real possibility, it couldn’t make him fall apart. But hearing Toki _say_ it, and so cheerfully, uncorked every emotion he’d contained all those long months. His grief, his loneliness, his guilt, his rage, his ineptitude hit him in a torrent, ground his bones to dust. In the moonlight Toki’s skin was pallid, the shadows making his eyes look sunken.  
  
“Y....You’re _nots_ dead.”  
  
He touched his hand, the skin beneath his fingertips clammy. Toki’s torso was a rotted husk, his organs hanging off the edge of the bed like a pair of nylons. He looked at Toki’s face and saw maggots threaded through his flesh, his teeth blackened little nubs, the stench of **Death** inescapable and no, _no_ this was wrong. Skwisgaar knew it was wrong. He just needed proof. He clambered onto the bed **,** fitting himself into the space between the guardrail and Toki’s body. He nudged his face through a forest of hair, the ends still damp from a recent washing. Warmth radiated from his skin; a thunderous heartbeat hammered against his palm. Not dead. Skwisgaar had always been a tactile learner.  
  
“You nots deads, alrights?” He found an exposed patch of skin near Toki’s collarbone and spoke the words into it, hoping they’d dissolve into his bloodstream. He slung his arm across his chest, tucking his hand tightly beneath Toki’s ribs.“You nots deads. You almost...buts you _didn’ts_ , okays? You’s _here_.”  
  
Toki moved sluggishly, his eyelids fluttering open. Great, Skwisgaar’s sleep-deprived delirium woke him up. Usually Skwisgaar had no qualms about making things about himself, but _now_ , about _this_? He felt like _suuuuuuuch_ a piece of shit.  
  
“ _Whassamatta_ ,” Toki murmured. He wrested his arm out from beneath Skwisgaar and slid it down his spine, gathering enough energy to trace small circles.  
  
“You’re **_nots dead_** ,” Skwisgaar repeated. He realized he was shaking, the way he did when he was very small; alone in his mother’s bed, talking himself out of his bad feelings. He was disgusted by his own audacity, seeking comfort from _Toki_ , of all people. He wanted to offer something but felt so empty, his ragged breath sweeping through vast canyons.  
  
Toki’s motions slowed with his breathing. Skwisgaar imagined himself in the tiniest lifeboat, buoyed by the swell of the tide.  
  
“S’okay,” Toki muttered. And Skwisgaar desperately hoped it would be.


End file.
